Don’t listen to conservatives or the puppet major media outlets to understand the depth of Pelosi’s screw up on the Iraq war and how her base views it (or will view it once they wake up from their latest fantasy moment). Just go read The Nation, a premier liberal newspaper:

Has the end of America’s war on Iraq been brought closer by the recent vote in the House of Representatives? On March 23 the full House voted 218 to 212 to set a timeline on the withdrawal of US troops, with September 1, 2008, as the putative date after which war funding might be restricted to withdrawal purposes only. It’s not exactly a stringent deadline. It only requires Bush to seek Congressional approval before extending the occupation and spending new funds to do so.

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Thus when it comes to the actual war, which has led to the bloody disintegration of Iraqi society, the death of up to 5,000 Iraqis a month, the death and mutilation of US soldiers every day, nothing at all has happened since the Democrats rode to victory in November courtesy of popular revulsion in America against the war. Bush’s reaction to this censure at the polls was to appoint a new commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, to oversee the troop surge in Baghdad and Anbar Province. The Democrats voted unanimously to approve Petraeus, and now they have OK’d the money for the surge.

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So, in Congress 420 representatives officially have no problem with the war in Iraq continuing until the eve of the next election. Ten are foursquare against it, which is more or less where Congress has always been, in terms of committed naysayers.

Antiwar forces in Congress are now weaker. Take Sam Farr of Santa Cruz, California, and Peter DeFazio of Eugene, Oregon, both Congressmen with large progressive constituencies. In the last Republican-controlled Congress they were stout opponents of the war, voting against authorization to invade and money for the war thereafter. No longer. Pelosi handed Farr bailout money for his district’s spinach growers, and DeFazio got funding for schools and libraries. Who knows? Perhaps a few dollars of the latter will go to wheelchair access for the paraplegics who will come home from Iraq over the next sixteen months, maimed in the war for which DeFazio just voted more money.

This liberal is just ahead of the rest. Because, as I said, the Congress has given their tacit approval of the Surge by fully funding it for the foreseeable future. The last federal Budget Bush will sign into law will go into effect Sept 2008, magically the same time period Dems established as a wishy-washy withdrawal date. But Bush is Commander-in-Chief until January 2009. And there will be an election at that time to determine our path ahead. And if there are clear signs of progress – as there have been already – and if al Qaeda is still claiming Iraq is the key battlefield for them, and there are still terrorist attacks around the world, we will not be running from Iraq in a full Liberal-panic-driven retreat in the fall of 2008.

So what has Pelosi accomplished? Nothing but refuted and weakened the anti-war left. Which will be a recurring event as Dems try to play to the middle of America and win power. They will tell the gullible a good tale of fiction, and then dump them when they win the election. As they ALWAYS do.